Anyone successfully downloaded their entire Google Photos

15 Jul 26 10:40 am

Anyone successfully downloaded their entire Google Photos

Yes, plenty of people have done this successfully, and honestly it's a lot more doable than it sounds once you know the right approach. The most common method is using Google Takeout, which lets you export your entire library in one request instead of trying to save photos individually or album by album. It sounds intimidating when you're staring down a library with 10,000+ photos, but Takeout is built to handle exactly that kind of volume. The main things that trip people up are patience and setup: large libraries can take hours (sometimes even a day or two) to process before the download links are ready, and choosing sensible file size limits ahead of time helps avoid dealing with one massive, unwieldy zip file. It also helps to double check that all albums, shared photos, and any special folders are included in the export, since it's easy to assume "everything" is selected when it isn't. Once the export is ready, downloading in batches and verifying file counts against your actual library helps confirm nothing got missed. If you want to see the whole process broken down step by step, including how to avoid the common snags people run into with big libraries, this guide on how to download all photos from Google Photos is a solid resource that walks through it clearly from start to finish.